Animal Shelter
by Whatamagig
Summary: When Lenalee volunteered to help out at an animal shelter run by her roomate's family, she imagined something along the lines of happy little animals romping around outside. This was beyond expectations. AllenxLenalee KandaxLenalee LavixLenalee


ANIMAL SHELTER

Prologue: First Impressions

A/N: Before we get started here, I would just like to say one thing.  
THIS WILL NOT BE A KAWAII NEKO TYPE OF FIC.  
Nor will this be pointless animal fetish smut.  
There IS a plot to this. So please, bear with me. C:

This is also my first published fanfic, so please. Be gentle. XD;

***

"Can I help you?" a man drawled in a Portuguese accent. He was halfway behind the door, so the girl on the porch could only make out wavy black hair falling into golden eyes and over a dark skinned face.

"Ah, yes," the girl said, holding up the piece of paper she had been clutching to her chest. "I'm Lenalee Lee. I'm here for the…" she checked the paper again for the right phrase. "Temporary caretaker position?"

"Oh. You must be the one Road sent." The man flashed a brilliant, face splitting grin so wide it looked painful, white teeth standing out against his dark skin. He opened the door wider, making a welcoming gesture with his free arm. "I'm Tyki Mikk. Please, come in. My sister's told me quite a bit about you. Quite the animal lover, hm?"

"Yes sir," Lenalee replied, returning the smile as she walked through the door, albeit a bit hesitantly. "Road told me about this place and I just had to come."

"Well I'm glad you could come," Tyki purred, "I'm leaving on vacation, you see, and I just didn't think I could leave the animals here all by themselves." Truth be told, he man's wide smile was starting to frighten Lenalee a bit.

"Well, I'll be glad to help in any way I can," she said uncertainly as she observing the entryway of the old-house-turned-animal-shelter, brushing a strand of her dark hair behind her ear.

The entryway of the Millennium Animal Sanctuary was much like the outside of the building had been. Cold, dirty, and decrepit. When Lenalee had first approached the seemingly ancient building, she'd started to regret her decision to do a little volunteer work.

Now she was really regretting it.

This place definitely wasn't what she was expecting. When her college roommate had told her about the animal shelter her family ran, she'd thought something along the lines of happy little puppies and kitties romping around outside. Not a desolate looking old manor.

"You won't need to do much," Tyki said, _still_ smiling. Lenalee tried not to shiver at the thought of the man's gold eyes boring into her forehead. Creepy house **and** a creepy caretaker. This place had it all. "All of the food's been left out for them. All you need to do is make sure they don't…escape. But don't worry. We've taken some precautions. They won't be going anywhere." Lenalee nodded, not quite understanding what the man meant. Escape? How hard could it possibly be to keep a few dogs in line?

"Yes, well, enough small talk." Tyki sighed, smile dropping off his face so suddenly that Lenalee jumped. "I'll show you around. C'mon. I don't have much time here." His voice was borderline snippy now.

Tyki led through the dingy entryway and past a wide doorway that looked like it was missing a set of double doors, not bothering to stop as he made his way through the aged dwelling. "That's the dining room," he flapped a gloved hand in the direction of the entry as they passed. "Kitchen's on the other side. Food's made there and all that," he said hastily, continuing on towards a set of stair at the other end of the entryway.

"All of the animals are kept upstairs," he explained, not slowing in his pace as Lenalee had to jog to keep up with the man's long strides. Each step they took sent up a puff of dust, and Lenalee tried hard not to sneeze. "Each of the animals gets their own room."

This was the first thing that Lenalee found a bit odd, aside from the deplorable state of the house. Sure, it was nice that each of the animals got their own space, but wasn't it just a tad bit unnecessary? They were just animals, after all. They didn't need personal space.

Lenalee was paraded past several doors, each of which seemed to have a word chipped into the graying wood. The first door they passed at the top of the stairs held the word "RABBIT." How nice, thought Lenalee, that they took care of more than the average cats and dogs here.

"You might want to avoid that one, being the attractive girl you are." Tkyi said with a wink, nodding towards the door they just past. "Quite the womanizer, he is." She blinked. Aside from being slightly disturbed by the man's disconcerting behavior, it was also quite worrisome that a rabbit could be considered a "womanizer."

They continued on down the dank hallway, past a door that read "DOG," past a another where the label had been scratched out (Lenalee could have sworn it said "BAT"), and to a door that read "CAT."

Here, Tyki finally stopped in his frenzied march through the house. "Never go in there," he said clearly, jabbing a finger at the door. "Ever. That one has an extremely foul temper, and I'd rather not have to clean up a bloodbath when I get back."

"Yes sir," Lenalee said hastily, nodding as she edged away from the door. "If you don't mind me asking, what kind of cat is in there?" Really, what kind of cat could be that dangerous? Surely it wasn't anything big. Like a tiger. Or a lion. Or-

"That's not important," the man answered too quickly, continuing down the hallway. "Just don't go in there and you won't have to find out."

"O-okay." Lenalee cast on last glance over her shoulder at the door and winced. She could see claw marks marring the wooden surface.

At long last they reached the (dimly lit) end of the hall, where a door marked "CARETAKER."

"This is your room," Tyki said with another bone-chillingly sinister smile. "Road sent a few of your things from your dorm room, so don't worry about clothes or anything of the sort." Lenalee opened her mouth to protest (because she really, _really_ didn't want to spend the night here), before she was interrupted by a strange wailing sound.

"YOU'RRRRE LAAAAATEEEE!" the shrill voice wailed, sounding piercing yet muffled at the same time.

Lenalee watched in confusion as Tyki pulled a small object, about the size of a playing card, out of his breast pocket. The strange gadget was obviously the source of the howling.

"Sorry." he apologized smiling, punching a button on the small playing-card-like device. The wailing stopped instantly. "Cell Roran Personal Assistant. Very annoying, but very helpful. Apparently I'm late." With a wave, Tyki turned on his heel and began to stride back down the hallway.

"Wait! Mister Mikk!" Lenalee called, giving chase. "You can't expect really me to stay here!"

"Oh, but I do." The man's smile turned cruel as he reached the bottom of the steps, picking up a black top hat from the banister and dusting it off before placing it on his head. "I'll be back in a week or so. Do make sure that the animals don't get out, would you dear?" The man doffed his newly-acquired hat at the girl, still smiling viciously.

A week?! Lenalee stopped at the top of the stairs, horrified. She didn't want to spend a week here. Sure, animals were great, and according to Road these animals needed some help. But surely they didn't need her here for an entire week, night and day.

"Wait, Mister Mikk, don't-!"

The door slammed shut, and Lenalee could tell this was going to be a long week.

***

Lenalee sat on her new bed, in her new room, trying to decide how to proceed. Her college roommate, Road Camelot, had sent her here for a good reason. She just couldn't just _leave_. The poor animals here needed someone to look after them. Or prevent them from "escaping," as Tyki had put it. But then again, she didn't exactly want to stay in this dingy old room for a week either. By herself. Alone in the house with nothing but a few cats to keep her company.

Lenalee heaved a sigh. She was going to have to stay. Maybe she could find some cleaning supplies somewhere around here and tidy up a bit-

CRASH

Lenalee leapt from her bed, startled. The sound of shattering glass had just reverberated through the house. Something had just shattered, and it sounded like it was downstairs.

This meant one of two things. One of the animals had gotten loose (which didn't seem likely, seeing as how they were all supposed to be in their "rooms"), or someone else was in the house.

As quietly as she possible could, she snuck out of her room, tiptoed past the doors, and slipped down the staircase. She was surprised that none of the steps had creaked, considering their age. She could make out voices now, although just barely.

"Aw, shit!" one of them cursed loudly. "That was one of the good cups too!"

"SSH!" someone else hissed, quieter than the other. "…quiet… hear you."

From the sound of things, someone had broken into the animal shelter. Remaining silent, Lenalee crept closer to the dining room where the voices were emanating from. She could hear everything they were saying now.

"Psh. I could hear her coming from a mile away. All ears, remember?" the first speaker, who was the one who had cursed loudly, said.

"Very funny Lavi," the second speaker, who sounded quite a bit younger than the other, laughed. A strange, almost _barking_ laugh that didn't go with the voice at all. "But I wonder how long this one will last." Lenalee noticed that this one had an accent. British, from the sound of it.

"My new cup or the caretaker?" 'Lavi' asked jovially. Lenalee's eyebrows flew up. They were talking about…her?

"Be serious Lavi," speaker number two reprimanded.

"Alright, fine. But if you want my honest opinion, she'll probably run out of here screaming like the rest of 'em."

Lenalee didn't like where this conversation was going.

"Technically, only Miss Lotto did that," speaker number two said matter-of-factly. "The others just ran. And Miss Lotto tried to stay. Just the idiot upstairs threatened to claw her eyes out one too many times." Lenalee gasped. There was someone upstairs too? And they'd threatened to claw someone's eyes out? Just what kind of people were these intruders?

Too late, she clapped a hand over her mouth. The blood drained from her face as the kitchen went silent.

"You hear that Al?" whispered Lavi. "Sounds like she snuck up on us."

"I thought you were 'all ears'," the other speaker, 'Al', retorted.

"You didn't hear her either, so shut it." She could hear the smile in the older speaker's voice. "Anyways, we should go put her to the test, eh?"

"…Don't say that and wink at the same time. It makes you sound like the pervert you are."

There was a sound of wood scraping over wood, possibly a chair being pushed away from a table. Footsteps, and both the speakers came out into the entryway.

For a few seconds, Lenalee thought she was hallucinating. Both of the men looked _extremely_ odd.

The tallest one, a man with red hair bright enough to border on unnatural, beamed at her. The man's broad smile would have seemed genuine if it had reached his singular emerald green eye. His right eye was covered by a black patch.

"Oooh. This one's cute," he said, waggling his eyebrows mischievously. Based on his voice, this was Lavi.

The other one (who was obviously Al) was around Lenalee's age, a boy with pure white hair and silver eyes smiled sheepishly from behind his taller counterpart, as if to apologize for the other's behavior.

But unnatural looking hair wasn't the oddest part of their appearance. Oh no, not even close.

Both of them had _ears_. And not normal, human ears. Rather, they had the ears of animals were their normal ears should have been.

"Well, she's not screamin' yet," Lavi said, ears pointed in her direction. Rabbit ears the same color as his shocking red hair that flopped from the side of his head.

"W-what?" Lenalee croaked, backing up a step. Her eyes turned towards the shorter boy as he sighed.

"Yeah, but she's getting ready to run."Al sighed, white dog ears sagging in disappointment. Lenalee was vaguely aware of a matching white tail drooping behind him.

"Pity too," Lavi laughed bitterly. "This one's pretty hot."

That comment was just a bit too much for Lenalee to comprehend at the moment. Between the freaky building, the freaky caretaker who was now on vacation, and the freaky animal-people, there was just too much freaky floating around.

So she turned and bolted for her room.

"You sure can call 'em Al," she heard Lavi say as she bolted for the stairs. "I guess she just can't handle our amazing good looks." She could also hear hurried footsteps. They were coming after her.

"Miss, you don't have to run!" the dog-boy called. "It's not like we're going to eat you or anything."

She was at the top of the stairs now, sprinting down the hall.

"Yeah, what he said!" the rabbit-man yelled. "Cute little bunnies like me don't even eat meat!"

For some reason, Lenalee didn't really believe them. People weren't _supposed_ to have animal parts attached to their heads. It just wasn't natural.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she reached the end of the hall. With as much haste as she could manage, she opened the door, ran inside, and slammed it behind her.

If she hadn't been panting heavily and scared out of her mind, she would have heard the rabbit-man curse lowly.

"Oh shit. Please tell me she didn't just go in Yu's room."

Lenalee's first clue that she was in the wrong room should have been the room's dark interior. The pitch black chamber was nothing like the room she had just vacated. She didn't realize it, though, until she heard a low hiss from behind her.

Turning sharply, Lenalee squeaked and backed up against the door, moving as far away from whatever had made the noise as possible. A pair of shining yellow eyes glared back at her out of the darkness.

She was in the cat's room.


End file.
